


Ghosts In the Room

by carolinecrane



Series: Retrograde [17]
Category: CSI: Miami
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-29
Updated: 2004-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6310051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/pseuds/carolinecrane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be easier to compete with a person than a memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts In the Room

Tyler's never actually bailed someone out of jail before. And it seems like working in law enforcement should give him an advantage in these situations, but there's a big difference between processing video and running cell phone records and knowing the ins and outs of the precinct house.

It's not that he's nervous. Edgy, maybe…a little tense, but that's just the prospect of spending the rest of the day hanging out with Tim's brother. He feels a little guilty, because he's kind of looking forward to it, and he knows he shouldn't be.

"Hi," he says when he reaches the front desk, very carefully not smiling at the uniform on the other side of the counter, "I'm here to post bail for Matthew Speedle."

The cop murmurs directions to an office down the hall, and he passes cubicles and glass walls until he finds himself in a small room with stark white walls and a desk right in the center. Just for a second he feels like he's on a bad cop show, but he stifles a laugh and waits until the officer on duty looks up at him. "Hi," he says for the second time, "I need to post bail for Matthew Speedle."

"You the brother?"

"No," Tyler answers, and suddenly he's not so sure this was such a good idea, because somebody around here must know Tim, and if it gets back to Horatio that he bailed Tim's brother out of jail there will probably be questions Tim won't want to answer. "I'm a friend."

Just for a second he wonders if they're going to let him bail Matt out if he's not a family member, but then the cop shrugs and pushes a clipboard toward him. "Fill that out."

Tyler takes the clipboard and watches the cop walk out of the room, taking a seat in a row of hard plastic chairs along the wall to fill out paperwork. By the time he's done filling out forms and paying the clerk the door opens again, but when he looks up it's not the cop on duty or Matt. The man standing in the doorway staring at him looks familiar, but before Tyler can place him he's moving forward.

"You're here for…?"

"Matthew Speedle," Tyler answers, frowning as he tries to remember where he's seen the other man before. He's a cop – that much Tyler can tell from the badge clipped to his belt. A detective, judging from the suit, which means Tyler's probably seen him at the crime lab. "Is there a problem?"

"No problem," the detective says, forehead furrowed as he runs a hand over his bare scalp. "Don't I know you?"

"Tyler Jenson. I work in the crime lab."

"Right," the detective says, reaching out to shake the hand Tyler holds out to him. "You're…uh…"

"A/V lab," Tyler supplies, trying not to smirk at the way the other man's floundering.

"Right. Detective Bernstein. So you're…"

That's as far as he gets before the door opens behind him, nearly catching his shoulder as the cop on duty leads Matt into the room. Tyler watches Matt's eyes go a little wide and he can tell Matt's surprised to see him, but a second later he grins and shakes out of the officer's grip. "Hey. Big brother couldn't make it, huh?"

"He's working," Tyler answers, glancing at Detective Bernstein self-consciously. He doesn't know for sure that the detective knows Tim, but he doesn't want to be responsible for outing him to the entire precinct if he can help it. "So are you all clear or…?"

"No, I'm good," Matt answers, glancing at Bernstein and then the uniformed officer again. "Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure."

"Just make sure you stay out of trouble," Bernstein says, frowning at Matt in a way that makes Tyler wonder just how well they know each other. "I don't want to hear about you getting hauled in here again."

Matt grins way too cheerfully and disappears back into the hallway, leaving Tyler to smile his thanks before he follows. When they're almost out of the station Matt casts a sidelong glance in Tyler's direction. "He asked you to come get me?"

He hears the doubt in Matt's voice and swallows a wince, wondering just for a second if maybe Matt knows his brother better than Tim realizes. Then again, they grew up in the same house, so Matt's been around Tim enough to know at least a few things about him. "He was planning to come himself," Tyler says, "but then they got a call. I'm not sure how long he'll be, but you can wait for him at my place."

"You don't have to baby sit me." Matt pushes the door to the station open and steps outside, breathing deep before he turns to grin at Tyler again. "Nothing like the smell of freedom."

Tyler laughs in spite of himself, steering Matt in the direction of his car. "Don't get too used to it. I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight."

"He must be pretty pissed, huh?"

"You can't really blame him, can you?" Tyler asks, unlocking the car and waiting until Matt gets in to slide into the driver's seat. "He wasn't expecting you to show up, let alone to have to post your bail. You're just lucky they know him here or they would've called your parents."

Matt lets out a noncommittal snort as Tyler pulls out of the parking lot, but when Tyler looks over at him he's staring out the window. "Yeah, that Bernstein guy sure seemed to know him. I bet he was pissed when you showed up instead of Tim."

As soon as Matt says it Tyler knows exactly why Bernstein seemed so surprised to see him instead of Tim. He still doesn't remember seeing Bernstein hanging around Tim at the lab, but they've probably worked cases together and Tyler can't help wondering how often they see each other now. And he's not jealous, but when Matt laughs and shakes his head he knows he's not hiding his reaction very well.

"How long you been putting up with my brother?"

"A few months," Tyler answers, glancing at Matt long enough to register his expression. "You don't like him much, do you?"

"Hard to like somebody you don't even know," Matt says, bitterness creeping into his voice just long enough to make Tyler wonder. "It's not like we were ever all that close."

"He's still your brother."

Matt laughs at that, the sound hollow and Tyler finds himself wondering what happened to make Matt so angry at his only brother. He and his sister had their arguments growing up, and even now sometimes just for old times' sake, but they've always been close, and he can't imagine how two people could grow up in the same house and not have some kind of relationship.

"Look, if he didn't care what happens to you he would have let you sit in jail," Tyler says, pulling into a parking space outside of his apartment before he looks at Matt again. "He could have made you call your parents."

"Whatever," Matt says, climbing out of the car, and just for a second Tyler wonders if he's going to take off. He wonders if he'd try to stop him; it's his bail money on the line, but he knows Tim will pay him back for that. Suddenly he's not so sure he wants to spend who knows how long hanging out with Matt, even for Tim's sake. But he's already taken the time off work, and he doesn't really want to explain to Tim why he let Matt take off after he offered to keep an eye on him.

Matt doesn't try to take off, though. In fact, when Tyler finally climbs out of the car Matt's standing in the middle of the sidewalk, arms crossed over his chest in a defensive posture Tyler's seen a million times before. And it would be funny, knowing neither of them sees how alike they are, except that it's obvious now that there's more to the distance between them than just the difference in their ages.

He unlocks his door and lets Matt in, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it over a chair as he heads into the kitchen. "Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," Matt says, following him into the kitchen and hopping up onto the counter. He looks even younger than he is sitting there, legs swinging back and forth against Tyler's cabinets. And Tyler's never had a problem talking to anyone, but it's hard to know what he can and can't say to this kid who isn't supposed to know as much as he seems to about Tim's life.

He avoids having to make small talk by pretending to be busy trying to find something to feed Matt, but he can't put off looking at hiim forever, and he finally glances up to find Matt watching him. "You want a soda?"

"Got any beer?"

"I'm not giving you beer," Tyler says, shaking his head when Matt lets out a sigh. "You just got out of jail, don't you think you should at least _try_ to stay out of trouble for awhile?"

"Man, you have been hanging out with my brother too long," Matt says, but he takes the soda Tyler holds out.

"I like hanging out with your brother. You should try it sometime, you two might have more in common than you think."

"Man, you've known him…what, a couple months? I've known him my whole life, even if he likes to pretend he doesn't have a family. If you know so much about him, how come you didn't know about that Bernstein guy? I bet he's never even told you about David."

The words are on the tip of Tyler's tongue before he can stop them, and he just catches himself before he says them out loud. He doesn't manage to swallow the question fast enough, though, and he should have known Tim's little brother would be smart enough to notice.

"He didn't, did he? He never told you why he dropped out of college or what he did before he came here?"

"He mentioned a friend who died," Tyler says before he can stop himself. And he wants to stop, because he wants to know, but he doesn't want to hear it from Matt. He wants to hear all this from Tim, but Matt's already talking and Tyler's not sure how to stop him without walking out of the apartment and leaving him to fend for himself.

"Friend…that's one word for it, I guess. You know what he did when David died? He dropped off the face of the earth. For a whole year nobody knew where he was, and even when he finally resurfaced he wouldn't talk to us. He acted like it was our fault David was dead."

"Look, Matt…"

"You should have seen them together," Matt says, talking over him, and Tyler knows he's not going to stop until he says whatever it is he thinks Tyler needs to hear. Only Tyler has a feeling Matt's not really talking to him, and he wonders if maybe this is the reason Matt showed up on Tim's doorstep out of nowhere. "When they were together it was like nobody else even existed. My folks didn't even notice – Dad's always busy with the restaurants and Mom's too worried about other people's kids to care what's going on with her own. But I used to see them together when I was little, and even I could tell they were off in their own world somewhere."

Tyler's still standing in front of the open fridge, one hand on the door as he watches Matt scowl down at his linoleum. And he's not a psychiatrist, but he's studied acting and he knows how to read people. He knows anger when he sees it, betrayal too, and he can see that Matt resents Tim's relationship with someone who's been dead for years. And Tyler can't even blame him, because he's gripping the side of the fridge like it's a lifeline and he thinks he might throw up.

It's not that he expected Tim to come without a past – they've both got relationships in their past, and Tyler can live with that. He's glad, because all that stuff is what got them to where they are now. Only Tim's been holding back for as long as Tyler's known him, and now that he knows why…he almost wishes that jealous detective was the problem, because it would be a lot easier to compete with a person than it is to compete with a memory.

And Matt's still talking, not even aware Tyler's listening to him go on about the accident and how focused Tim was on fixing David, on going to med school and becoming a surgeon just so he could find a way to cure David's paralysis. He's reliving the two years Tim spent at Columbia, barely communicating with their parents unless their mother called and nagged him into coming home for a weekend. Weekends he spent with his head buried in a book, only looking up long enough to eat or pass out from sheer exhaustion for a few hours.

"I'm surprised he didn't kill himself," Matt says, gaze locked on the sink and looking at something only he can see. "That year he was gone, I figured for sure the cops would call any day to say they'd found him dead somewhere. If he didn't drive off a cliff or something I figured he'd find some other way to get himself killed."

"I think you should be telling all this to Tim." He's surprised at how calm he sounds, and he can tell by the way Matt looks at him that he's surprised too. But there's nothing he can do about any of it – nothing he can say that will make Matt feel any better, and no way he can go back to not knowing. And he wishes he could, but it's way too late for that now.

"Are you kidding? Have you ever tried talking to him? It's like talking to a wall. The only person he ever talked to was David."

"You should try. He might surprise you."

Tyler turns away from Matt, finally closing the fridge and picking up the containers he'd set on the counter before all this started. And maybe Matt doesn't know Tim as well as he likes to think he does after all, because he's wrong about one thing. Maybe Tim never talks to his family, but David's not the only person he's ever talked to.

It's not much, but it makes him feel a little better.


End file.
